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LISWire: Plano Independent School District Chooses Koha and LibLime
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December 2nd, 2008LISWireATHENS, OH --December 2, 2008-- LibLime, the leader in open-source solutions for libraries announced today that the Plano Independent School District (ISD) in Plano, Texas has selected a Koha ZOOM appliance solution for their next integrated library system.
Encompassing 68 schools, Plano ISD is nationally recognized for its education excellence. Twenty-four Plano schools have captured the prestigious National Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence honor, awarded by the U.S. Department of Education. Several Plano ISD schools have received the honor twice.
Plano ISD has selected LibLime as their partner for support and training of their Koha library system. In addition, LibLime is responsible for the data migration of their current collection of over 1 million items.
”We planned to upgrade or replace our current library automation system during the 2008-09 school year due to its announced end of life in terms of future enhancements.” says David Schuster, Library Technology Coordinator for the school district. “ After evaluating existing proprietary library systems along with a variety of open-source options, Koha ZOOM became the obvious choice due to its flexibility and promise of long-term development and support,” says Learning Media Services Director Diane Lutz.
LibLime became a key component in the Plano ISD decision due to its proven ability to add specific functionality to the Koha application and its willingness to work closely with the district in developing identified enhancements.
Many developers contribute to the improvement of the Koha ZOOM open-source code, so Plano ISD is confident that issues will be resolved and changes made quicker and more efficiently than with proprietary counterparts.
”The decision to seek out a web- based, open-source automation system was in line with our district's desire to use open-source whenever available," stated Mary Hewett, the district’s Executive Director for Instructional Technology.
About Plano Independent School District
Plano ISD (http://www.pisd.edu) serves the residents of approximately 100 square miles in southwest Collin County. This area includes the City of Plano, northern portions of cities of Dallas and Richardson, the city of Parker and parts of Allen and Murphy.
Plano schools have been the recipient of several state and national honors, including the National Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence honor, awarded by the U.S. Department of Education. Plano ISD recently received outstanding scores on the 2008 accountability ratings report given by The Texas Education Agency, scoring "exemplary" on 18 out of 25 academic indicators.
The school district's website and online instructional center have captured several top state and national awards for innovation in design and user-friendliness.
Plano ISD has also pioneered “University Ready”, collection of online tools and resources designed to engage students (prek-12) and parents in preparing for post-secondary education.
About Koha ZOOM
Koha ZOOM represents a generational leap in Koha's development. Notably, it includes a powerful search engine based on Zebra, a high-performance indexing and retrieval engine. Koha ZOOM's search engine can read structured records in practically any input format (eg. email, XML, MARC) and allows access to them through exact boolean search expressions and relevance-ranked free-text queries. It supports large databases (more than ten gigabytes of data, tens of millions of records) as well as incremental, safe database updates on live systems.
To try out Koha ZOOM for yourself, visit LibLime's demos:
About LibLime
As the leader in open-source solutions for libraries, LibLime offers a refreshing alternative to expensive proprietary software. Rather than sell software licenses for static, hard-to-customize software products, LibLime promotes the benefits of open source, enabling libraries to make choices about how best to provide their communities and staff with better technology services. LibLime enables libraries to use open-source software to its full potential by providing outstanding commercial support services - hosting, migration assistance, staff training, support, software maintenance, and development--solutions tailored to each customer's needs.
Use of open source not only lowers the per-library cost of running software, it also empowers libraries with a higher level of control over customization and the overall direction of software development.
Press Contact
Tina Burger
Vice President, Marketing LibLime
(888)Koha ILS (564-2457)
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